A CHANGING MORAL CLIMATE © 2013 – Philosophy and Public Issues (New Series), Vol. 3, No. 1 (2013): x-x Luiss University Press E-ISSN 2240-7987 | P-ISSN 1591-0660 Jack, Jill, and Jane 1 in a Perfect Moral Storm 2 3 4 Dale Jamieson 5 6 7 8 tephen Gardiner’s A Perfect Moral Storm is a wonderful 9 book. It goes a long way towards explaining why we have 10 failed to act on climate change. I agree almost entirely with 11 its broad conclusions and with most of its specific claims. The 12 author and I are comrades in the struggle, and like-minded in the 13 ways that matter most. Still, there is an important difference 14 between us. I do not want to overstate this difference nor 15 exaggerate its significance. However, I believe that articulating 16 this difference can help clarify why moral arguments have largely 17 failed to move us to respond to climate change. 18 Gardiner and I agree that our response to climate change 19 constitutes a “profound ethical failure” but we disagree about the 20 nature of this failure. 1 Gardiner thinks that we have moral norms 21 and concepts that apply that we are not living up to. Thus we are 22 the proper subjects of moral condemnation. He charges us with 23 “willful self-deception and moral corruption”(11). I do not deny 24 that with respect to some of our climate change contributing 25 behavior there are applicable moral norms which we fail to live 26 1 The quoted words are from the flyleaf of Stephen M. Gardiner, A Perfect Moral Storm: The Ethical Tragedy of Climate Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011). Parenthetical page references are to this book. S